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Our excellent Fantasy Grand Prix game has been a lottery at times for players – the unpredictable nature of 2012, coupled with several different race winners – but fret no more. We’re looking at the season so far and decoding which driver is bringing more bang for their buck.

We’ll start with the current standings in the chase for the Driver’s Championship. With these points counting towards a driver’s overall score in the game, we all know which Spaniard is the best to have in your team…

Kimi and Lewis have enjoyed the champagne in 2012, but not as much as Fernando – credit: octanephotos.co.uk

Fernando Alonso £18m – 164

Mark Webber £16m – 124

Sebastian Vettel £20m – 122

Lewis Hamilton £18m – 117

Kimi Raikkonen £14m – 116

Nico Rosberg £12m – 77

Jenson Button £18m – 76

Romain Grosjean £8m – 76

Sergio Perez £6m – 47

Kamui Kobayashi £6m – 33

Pastor Maldonado £6m – 29

Michael Schumacher £16m – 29

Paul Di Resta £8m – 27

Felipe Massa £16m – 25

Bruno Senna £7m – 24

Nico Hulkenberg £8m – 19

Jean-Eric Vergne £6m – 4

Daniel Ricciardo £7m – 2

But, the beauty of the Badger GP game are the Bonus Points, with 3 awarded for each place the driver finishes above his grid slot. This has produced some curious results in terms of bargain drivers.

The big winner here is Sauber’s Sergio Perez, who – as we found out in an earlier Statistic article – finishes, on average, five places higher that where he starts. That means, on average, he scores 15 points guaranteed, before he even gets into the top ten and scores points.

Other big winners include Kimi Raikkonen and, surprisingly, Jean Eric-Vergne. But, when the Frenchman is consistently ending up out of qualifying in Q1, then the only way is up.

This also shows that spending a paltry £2m on a driver Nahrain Karthekeyan is a worthwhile investment – indeed, Charles Pic is fourth in the standings for Bonus Points, and is yours for a snip at £3m.

So the next logical train of thought takes us to who has scored the most Fantasy Points overall?

The three big winner here are Fernando Alonso, Kimi Raikkonen and Sergio Perez. Alonso’s consistent points-scoring, coupled with his knack of moving his Ferrari further up the grid, puts him firmly in the overall lead. Kimi’s issues with his qualifying is actually turning into an advantage in the Fantasy game – in fact, bar China, Malaysia and Monaco, the Finn has managed to score bonus points in every round.

But, they’re both eclipsed by Sergio’s incredible finishing rate. The Mexican’s points scoring has been big when he moves up the grid – two 12-place jumps, one 11, one 9 and one 8 – nearly put him on par with Raikkonen in terms of overall points, even though the Finn has over twice as many World Championship points to his name.

This massive jump also puts Sergio at the top of the last area of the game we’re looking at; cost-efficiency.

Only costing you £6m, Perez is a must have in any Fantasy GP team. What this last chart also shows us, it that for every Fernando, Lewis or Sebastian you pick, you’ll need to balance the books with a cheaper alternative. Who’s leading the way in terms of the “new” teams?

It’s that man Charles again. Only costing £3m (as we stated earlier), and leading the way in Bonus Points, the little Frenchman is the best non-points-scoring driver. Spare a thought for Caterham’s Heikki Kovalainen though. He’s been outscored by his new team-mate Vitaly Petrov, and thanks to his high price tag, is languishing at the bottom of the table with the Massa’s and Schumacher’s.

The other man worth mentioning is Karthikeyan, who has racked up 54 Bonus Points – the same amount as reigning World Champ Vettel, and at a price 10 times less!

In conclusion, the three stand-out drivers of Fantasy GP 2012 are;

Fernando Alonso

World Championship Points – 164

Bonus Points – 90

Points-per-million – 14.1

£18m

Sergio Perez

World Championship Points – 47

Bonus Points – 174

Points-per-million – 36.8

£6m

Charles Pic

World Championship Points – 0

Bonus Points – 84

Points-per-million – 28

£3m

The real question is, who will be the best driver over the remaining 9 rounds?

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